all good things must come to an end

Keegan's first day away from Mommy. He hardly noticed the difference as long as the milk was there, he didn't seem to care what form it was in.

Well, the day finally arrived...the end of summer, the end of my maternity leave, and the end of sleeping in late! Now, it's back to early mornings, back to battling traffic and the seemingly endless Tallahassee road construction, and back to reality.

My emotions about returning to work are mixed and depend on the time of day. My favorite time to be home is early in the morning. It's then that I appreciate the children and this time I have with them the most. I start by nursing Keegan, quietly observing him, in all his beauty and innocence, enjoying his morning snack. After singing a couple of lullabies and getting up a good burp, I place him back in his crib where I can nearly guarantee that he'll sleep for the next two to three hours. On a good day, the boys are still asleep and I get some time all to myself to drink my coffee, surf the web, and (only after I have procrastinated to the extent that I have nothing interesting left to read online) finally hit the treadmill. It's about this time that Logan will wake up and keep me company, incessantly asking question after question about this world we live in (Why did God make so much stuff? When can we get to see heaven? Why do you still have a big tummy, Mommy? How did Keegan get in there anyway? Why do we have telephone poles? And the list goes on and on). Eventually, we wake up Sleeping Beauty (Gavin) and snuggle up on the couch together to watch the Disney Channel. This is, without a doubt, one of my favorites times of day, and the thing I'm missing the most.


Fast forward to lunch time. As I attempt to make lunch with my left hand while juggling Keegan in my right, the boys practice their newfound Kung Fu Panda moves...on each other. This inevitably results in crying, fighting, and sustained injuries. Couple this with the fact that all three children are now hungry and tired, and one can certainly understand why I've been looking forward to the start of the new school year.

So, we are slowly getting back into our routines as well as finding some new ones. Last week, during teacher planning, I had to work, but the kids were still off. We have a new nanny, but she was still in Destin finishing up an internship, so I had no idea what I was going to do. Thankfully, the mother of the family I used to nanny for as a college student offered to help out. And boy how the tables have turned! Her five children seem all grown up. So much so that I hardly recognize them! When I started working for her, the youngest was just a baby and the oldest was 11 or 12. Now, that "baby" is a fifth grader and her oldest son is a 20-year-old college student. How's that for making me feel old!?!? Anita has done a wonderful job of raising her kids to be kind, generous, and polite young adults and it was so nice to be able to leave for work knowing the boys would be loved and cared for.